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	Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

Pro-Israel Furor at Brooklyn College

(Young Spartacus pages)

A gang of rabid Zionists waged an unsuccessful campaign to shut down a February 7 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) forum at Brooklyn College (BC), which featured liberal academic Judith Butler and Palestinian BDS spokesman Omar Barghouti. Alan Dershowitz, who infamously championed the use of torture as part of the “war on terror,” and Democratic state assemblyman Dov Hikind, an avowed former member of the fascistic Jewish Defense League, took the lead in this provocation. At a press conference with Hikind and others, city council member David Greenfield slandered the timid, liberal BDS campaign as a “hate-filled, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist movement.” After the event, the Anti-Defamation League published an ad in the New York Times (8 February) that read, “In its support for the ‘right of return’ for refugees, they [the BDS activists] are advocating...the destruction of the Jewish state through demography.”

In a January 29 letter to BC president Karen L. Gould, ten prominent New York City politicians demanded that the event be cancelled and/or official sponsorship revoked. The letter also suggested that the city council might withhold future funding to Brooklyn College—where the student population is nearly 20 percent Jewish. Two days later, 19 “progressive” politicians (including Democratic mayoral contenders Christine Quinn, John Liu, Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson) also demanded that BC revoke its sponsorship of the event. President Gould refused to cancel the BDS forum. At the same time, according to BC Tanger Hillel’s Web site, Gould issued a statement that did not utter a word of opposition to the slanders made against BDS and said, “We deeply value our Israeli partners and would not endorse any action that would imperil the State of Israel.”

NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg—a vocal supporter of Israel who presides over the NYPD’s anti-Muslim spying program—sided with Gould and essentially ordered his minions on the city council to back off. The humbled politicians retracted their demand in a sycophantic February 6 letter to Gould. Chemi Shalev opined in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (9 February) that the campaign to shut down the Brooklyn College event left the Zionists looking “inflated and melodramatic” and “unhinged.” Shalev also lamented that this was a “PR coup” for the BDS activists.

The forum drew a huge audience and gained national and international publicity. Outside the event, Zionists faced off against a group of demonstrators that included supporters of the reformist International Socialist Organization and a group of orthodox Jews against Israel. Supporters of the New York Spartacus Youth Club and the Spartacist League sold Workers Vanguard to the crowd lined up outside and held signs reading “Down With the Zionist Witchhunt at Brooklyn College! Defend the Palestinians!” and “For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!”